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All Verizon phones are unlocked. So with this iPhone SE being locked to particular service, you might need to use a Sim from an opposing carrier to put it in to bypass the activation and then you should be able to use it as an iPod touch.
Is using a iPhone better than purchasing an iPod touch.since the iPod would have outdated hardware
 
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Is using a iPhone better than purchasing an iPod touch.since the iPod would have outdated hardware
The SE has many advantages over the iPod touch.

1. Better CPU/GPU - the SE uses the A9 chip; the touch uses an A8 (plus it's underclocked).
2. More RAM - The SE has 2GB of RAM; the touch only has 1GB.
3. Larger battery - the SE has a much bigger battery; the touch has horrendous battery life, especially when playing games.
4. Better camera - the SE has a higher quality camera
5. TouchID - the SE has it, the touch doesn't
6. GPS - the SE has it, the touch doesn't
7. NFC - the SE has it, the touch doesn't

The only advantage that the touch has is that it's physically smaller ... and that's only an advantage for people who attach value to the smaller form factor (and it's really only thinner)
 
Is using a iPhone better than purchasing an iPod touch.since the iPod would have outdated hardware
Wait the possible month to see if there’s a new model

It’s likely since there’s hardware identifiers like iPod 9,1 in an actual iOS version
 
The SE has many advantages over the iPod touch.

1. Better CPU/GPU - the SE uses the A9 chip; the touch uses an A8 (plus it's underclocked).
2. More RAM - The SE has 2GB of RAM; the touch only has 1GB.
3. Larger battery - the SE has a much bigger battery; the touch has horrendous battery life, especially when playing games.
4. Better camera - the SE has a higher quality camera
5. TouchID - the SE has it, the touch doesn't
6. GPS - the SE has it, the touch doesn't
7. NFC - the SE has it, the touch doesn't

The only advantage that the touch has is that it's physically smaller ... and that's only an advantage for people who attach value to the smaller form factor (and it's really only thinner)
The Battery alone is worth it (see above.)
 
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I finally broke down and got an SE in Apples latest sale ($299 128G).

The battery in my Touch 6 can no longer hold a charge and I can no longer wait on Touch 7 rumors.
 
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I finally broke down and got an SE in Apples latest sale ($299 128G).

The battery in my Touch 6 can no longer hold a charge and I can no longer wait on Touch 7 rumors.

Getting an SE sounds like a good solution. I wonder too about the iPod touch update rumors... meanwhile having got an XR for phone I am using my SE in place of the iPod touch 6 now. At first I had to put the SE away because I kept grabbing it up on the way out of the house thinking it was still "my phone" :rolleyes: but my brain seems to have squared that away now so the SE is out of quarantine and in use around the house again, but pretending to be an iPod touch 6... besides a good batt, my SE has more storage too. :)
 
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Getting an SE sounds like a good solution. I wonder too about the iPod touch update rumors... meanwhile having got an XR for phone I am using my SE in place of the iPod touch 6 now. At first I had to put the SE away because I kept grabbing it up on the way out of the house thinking it was still "my phone" :rolleyes: but my brain seems to have squared that away now so the SE is out of quarantine and in use around the house again, but pretending to be an iPod touch 6... besides a good batt, my SE has more storage too. :)

Are you comfortable using the XR ?

The SE seems like the perfect size to me and it's a shame they stopped producing it.
 
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Are you comfortable using the XR ?

The SE seems like the perfect size to me and it's a shame they stopped producing it.

On the XR: not really comfortable, no. I do miss the SE's smaller size, and feel like I'm using a half-width iPad mini as a phone sometimes.

Part of the discomfort could also be the weight of the XR plus added heft of the clear Apple case I got for it. With the SE I had just settled for a set of softer, translucent, jelly-bean colored silicon covers. Picked the least obnoxious one and was fine with it over space gray SE. My XR is a wonderful yellow color and I like it that way, so I'm sticking with what I got to cover it against corner dings.

The "reachability" software doesn't really cut it for me, so it's the size and weight combo in the end that are problematic for me with the XR. I never use the XR one-handed but have often used both the iPod touch 6 and iPhone SE with just one hand.

As someone else posted somewhere on MacRumors, once you figure you have to provide a "reachability" feature for a fair sample of the using population, there's something not quite right about the basic ergonomics of the thing, eh?

This is not knocking Apple's admirable efforts regarding an array of accessibility features, just saying... a lot more folks these days can't access everything on the screen of their larger iPhones without a software boost to give them "larger hands".

Still, en masse, we as mobile gear customers seem to have ditched ergonomics as an issue and prefer to focus on the larger screens -- more real estate being easier on the eyes I guess, accommodating multitasking as well as single apps that use more display space, or just allowing more unfoldered icons per page on the device.

I don't know what the other reasons are for preferring larger screens on a phone. My own preference there involves just switching to an iPad mini when what I'm reading on a smaller iPhone or iPod touch seems annoyingly cramped or too small. For ease of use in that situation, I do have to thank Apple for the "handoff" software feature (although Continuity and Handoff have what can seem like an intimidating checklist of hardware and software requirements if one has an array of devices and some of them are older). AppleInsider had a piece up awhile back that kind of stepped me through setting that stuff up on some of my gear.
 
Still, en masse, we as mobile gear customers seem to have ditched ergonomics as an issue and prefer to focus on the larger screens -- more real estate being easier on the eyes I guess, accommodating multitasking as well as single apps that use more display space, or just allowing more unfoldered icons per page on the device.

I think the manufacturers are driving this since the larger device brings in more money.
 
I think the manufacturers are driving this since the larger device brings in more money.

Maybe. The attractions of larger real estate are clearer to me in some situations than in others. I have noticed if I feel like watching a video podcast now I am more likely to use the XR than the SE. Similarly some episodes of M*A*S*H (which I had bought as a bundle from iTunes and was downloading a season at a time to a laptop) I elected to take down to the XR whereas I probably would not have done that with the SE.

For some odd reason I still prefer reading books on the SE vs the XR, probably because I had got used to getting the font just a certain way on the SE and then thumbing my way through the book and hardly having to move my eyes at all, just taking in a pageview at a time.

In the first few weeks of owning the XR and having a few then current reads parked on there in the Books app, I found myself switching to scrolling mode as I was irritated otherwise by knowing I was having to glance down to see all of a set page.
 
Don't know if this was mentioned but the iPhone if bought new should have an included SIM card. Pop it in and you should be able to get through all the set up screens. Also don't forget to connect to wifi.
 
Don't know if this was mentioned but the iPhone if bought new should have an included SIM card. Pop it in and you should be able to get through all the set up screens. Also don't forget to connect to wifi.

My new SE came with a T-Mobile SIM already in it.

As it was, I was not able to get through the setup screens without activating the SIM (calling T-Mobile).

To get through the setup without activating the SIM, I had to,
1) Removed the SIM. Midway down the right hand side, is a small hole used to release the SIM. After completely powering down, I carefully used a small bent paper clip to eject the SIM and then removed it from the SE.
2) Powered the SE back up and connected it to my computer using the USB to lightning cable that comes with the SE.
3) Opened iTunes and verified that the SE showed up in the left hand column.
4) With my SE still connected to my computer, ran through setup on my SE.
5) After it was setup, I disconnected the SE from my computer, completely powered the SE down, and inserted the SIM card I bought from Mint Mobile.

I wanted to load the iTunes backup from my iPod Touch 6 into the SE but the SE was iOS 10.2 and my Touch 6 was iOS 10.3 . I ended up having to update the SE to the latest iOS (I was going to anyways) before I could restore the Touch 6 iTunes backup into the SE (with the SE connected to my computer and my computer running iTunes). After disconnecting from iTunes, I went into settings > about and changed the iPhone name (restoring the backup from my Touch had renamed my SE to the name my Touch was called). I then connected my SE to my computer and backed up the SE under the new name in iTunes.

As a final step since this was my first iPhone, I had to clean up my contact list on iCloud. I ran the contacts app on my computer and added all the information from my Samsung. I also deleted contact information I no longer needed and updated the information that was already there. This by far was the most time consuming part of getting the SE operational :(.
 
My new SE came with a T-Mobile SIM already in it.

As it was, I was not able to get through the setup screens without activating the SIM (calling T-Mobile).

To get through the setup without activating the SIM, I had to,
1) Removed the SIM. Midway down the right hand side, is a small hole used to release the SIM. After completely powering down, I carefully used a small bent paper clip to eject the SIM and then removed it from the SE.
2) Powered the SE back up and connected it to my computer using the USB to lightning cable that comes with the SE.
3) Opened iTunes and verified that the SE showed up in the left hand column.
4) With my SE still connected to my computer, ran through setup on my SE.
5) After it was setup, I disconnected the SE from my computer, completely powered the SE down, and inserted the SIM card I bought from Mint Mobile.

I wanted to load the iTunes backup from my iPod Touch 6 into the SE but the SE was iOS 10.2 and my Touch 6 was iOS 10.3 . I ended up having to update the SE to the latest iOS (I was going to anyways) before I could restore the Touch 6 iTunes backup into the SE (with the SE connected to my computer and my computer running iTunes). After disconnecting from iTunes, I went into settings > about and changed the iPhone name (restoring the backup from my Touch had renamed my SE to the name my Touch was called). I then connected my SE to my computer and backed up the SE under the new name in iTunes.

As a final step since this was my first iPhone, I had to clean up my contact list on iCloud. I ran the contacts app on my computer and added all the information from my Samsung. I also deleted contact information I no longer needed and updated the information that was already there. This by far was the most time consuming part of getting the SE operational :(.


Did you connect to wifi. It sounds like that may have been the case. I only ask because I work for a company I won't name selling cell phones for Verizon, Sprint, AT&T and a number of prepaid carriers. I have never had to go through what you did as long as I was connected to wifi and a compatible sim was inserted into the phone (even if the sim wasn't activated) this should work.
 
Did you connect to wifi. It sounds like that may have been the case. I only ask because I work for a company I won't name selling cell phones for Verizon, Sprint, AT&T and a number of prepaid carriers. I have never had to go through what you did as long as I was connected to wifi and a compatible sim was inserted into the phone (even if the sim wasn't activated) this should work.

I believe that I didn't have the option yet to turn on / select my Wifi before I was stuck at the screen where I needed to activate the SIM before continuing.

I'm not sure if it was a T-Mobile SIM issue but everything I read on the internet seem to indicate that you either needed to activate the SIM or connect the iPhone to iTunes without the SIM in order to set it up.

Note - In another thread, someone else had a similar issue.
 
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Been wanting a new iPod because the battery on my iPod Touch 6 sucks. I decided to go ahead and jump on a SE while they are available and make it my iPod. It is a good size to carry around with you and still has the headphone jack.

Mine came unlocked with the TMobile SIM. Setup was really easy. Once I got into the phone I got the contact TMobile screen to activate the phone. I bypassed that and setup my wi-fi and then connected to my pc with iTunes on it. Updated to the latest IOS and then setup all my music and playlists. Deleted every app I didn’t need to play music and was all set. Have not had any other props to activate the phone with TMobile.

So far happy with the purchase and the way it has worked out.
 
I believe that I didn't have the option yet to turn on / select my Wifi before I was stuck at the screen where I needed to activate the SIM before continuing.

I'm not sure if it was a T-Mobile SIM issue but everything I read on the internet seem to indicate that you either needed to activate the SIM or connect the iPhone to iTunes without the SIM in order to set it up.

Note - In another thread, someone else had a similar issue.
It asked you to log into your wifi before you even get to the activation. All you need is to connect to wifi and have a compatible sim in the phone (regardless if the sim is activated or not)
 
It asked you to log into your wifi before you even get to the activation. All you need is to connect to wifi and have a compatible sim in the phone (regardless if the sim is activated or not)

In that case, my Wifi was connected and I was unable to proceed with the setup without the SIM activation (T-Mobile) or without connecting it to my computer running iTunes with no SIM in the SE.
 
In that case, my Wifi was connected and I was unable to proceed with the setup without the SIM activation (T-Mobile) or without connecting it to my computer running iTunes with no SIM in the SE.
Well I don't know what you did but I have never heard of that. And see as I am not next to you it id hard to know what may have happened. Good luck.
 
In that case, my Wifi was connected and I was unable to proceed with the setup without the SIM activation (T-Mobile) or without connecting it to my computer running iTunes with no SIM in the SE.
Your phone might be locked to TMO.
 
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